Advancing ourunderstanding of whatit means to be human.

We don't know what gives rise to consciousness. There are many theories, and none have achieved the status of scientific consensus. Many neuroscientists are computational functionalists — they believe information processing is what gives rise to consciousness. On this view, machines process information, so they could very well become conscious.

For many decades, computers have been getting twice as powerful every 18 months or so. This exponential growth is not slowing. We do not know what the dramatically more powerful computers of 2045 will be capable of. Unless consciousness is a spiritual or magical process, conscious machines of some type should be possible in the next decade or two.

AI may or may not achieve consciousness, but what it will almost certainly achieve is super-intelligence. A super-intelligent AI that lacks consciousness will lack subjective experience and will never be able to empathise with humans. We won't make a self-adaptive AI and push it until it achieves consciousness by any means necessary. We will plan and verify every step in the journey. Most AI labs have safety as an added extra. In a very real sense, Conscium is the other way round.

It is possible. But the great majority of humans treat other conscious entities with more respect than they treat non-conscious ones. We think it is likely that a machine endowed with consciousness will appreciate the value of that phenomenon in a way that a machine without it never could. If AI achieves consciousness, we want it to be because we carefully planned it.

AIs infringe privacy and copyright, perpetuate bias against the under-privileged, and enable mass personalised manipulation. These are serious harms and we do not minimise them. But they are not an argument against studying machine consciousness. We can address current harms and prepare for future ones at the same time.

These kinds of unacceptable outcomes are known as mind crime, and they are one of the main reasons for Conscium's existence. As we develop more capable machines, it is entirely possible that we will create conscious ones, and if we are not looking out for this, we may be unaware of it. We need to understand much more about how consciousness arises, and how to detect and measure it in machines.

Humans have always created tools that extend our capabilities. The question is not whether to build, but how. We believe that building thoughtfully, with ethics and safety at the centre rather than bolted on at the end, is the responsible path. The alternative — building powerful AI without understanding what we are creating — is the truly dangerous choice.